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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516947">by whose own hand and no other</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tepriyalles/pseuds/Tepriyalles'>Tepriyalles</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Post-Canon, the author does not recommend coping with trauma this way at home</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:55:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516947</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tepriyalles/pseuds/Tepriyalles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Lilith has not been waiting for this prayer. She has been doing a great many other things. The throne of Hell is not one of idle hands. And yet, the moment she hears it, those great many other things are allowed to fall by the wayside. Court is dismissed. The fires, ever attentive to her mood, burn low. </p>
</blockquote>or a few things that might have happened between the moments we were given, and some that followed.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hilda Spellman &amp; Zelda Spellman, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>106</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>by whose own hand and no other</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I swore. Swore I had quit this show two seasons ago. What in the actual fuck was it about everyone's complete and total outrage over the trainwreck of part four that made me decide the right thing to do was binge both seasons I'd missed and then churn out a canon compliant continuation fic of all things in one feverish sitting? I will never know. </p><p>Everyone should have just watched the flight attendant instead (I say, from here with you all. In hell).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zelda wishes only to be done with this cursed night, to be left alone, but the false Marie prys at her with parting words she does not want to hear. </p><p>“For the first time, Zelda Spellman, I became someone not because I wished or was required to take something from you, but because I wanted to give something to you.” Those soft, expressive eyes she thought she knew, all at once, are filled with pain. “I see now, despite my best intentions, I have taken more from you than I ever had to give, and for that, I am sorry.” </p><p>A hand reaches towards her cheek, but Zelda withdraws, and it falls away. There will be no forgiveness, here.</p><p>“I could not even save you, today.” A few more quiet words, and Zelda watches that face through all of them, no longer able to see it as anything but a mask. The eyes flicker left, towards the gathering coven watching the gathering dead, and the other infernal creature in their midst. Zelda follows, settling on that particular silhouette. “But someone else did.” </p><p>By the time Zelda’s gaze returns from Lilith, the Loa is gone. </p>
<hr/><p>“I… owe you an apology.” </p><p>Lilith lifts her eyes curiously from the headstone to meet Zelda’s stare behind it. She’d waited until the crowd had dispersed to leave her infernal blossom upon the fresh turned earth. She had not wanted to disrupt the family’s grief, but found herself quietly carrying a bit of her own for the self-absorbed, infuriatingly angst-ridden fiend of a girl who’d so disrupted her eternal path, yet also, in several, blatantly unintentional ways, cemented it anew. </p><p>“You owe me nothing,” she answers slowly. “Especially not today.” </p><p>“Yes, well…” Zelda raises her cigarette to her lips with a shaky hand. “I didn’t know whether I’d have any cause to see you again, so you will l-let me speak, now.” </p><p>Lilith can’t miss the crack in her voice. The pain in every inch of her bleeds slowly through it, dripping out into the air. It is a potent agony, one that calls to a baser darkness in her, causes the fine hairs to stand up on her arms, prickle the nape of her neck. </p><p>Never let it be said Lilith is good at funerals. </p><p>“I turned you away, once. In a time of great need, because I feared what you brought us. I feared that, even in your solitude, you were always out to twist the girl’s life, to manipulate and destroy her, and in that belief I—”  </p><p>The cigarette keeps burning, untouched, gathering ash. </p><p>“—I treated you much the same as he did, didn’t I.” Her voice grows smaller, and the pain changes. Lilith can taste it in the air, no longer the agonizing grief, but the agonizing personal. The most intimate of regret. </p><p>“I believed you still carried him with you. I acted as though you were nothing but his pawn. As if you could be quashed down to the size of just another trouble caught in Sabrina's orbit. Again and again, and no matter how many times you…” Zelda shakes herself, brushes her hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand, seemingly oblivious to how close she draws fire to her skin. “Why, you even saved us, with no cause, no reward. And then, to find out, after… I’m sure there’s more to what you did to reclaim Hell than just what is being whispered across the realms but what I do know is… You had no hand in this. In this end. Chaos consuming everything in sight and you were none of the cause. All this senseless tragedy, all of it wrought by the hands of men I allowed into our home time and t-time again, and—” </p><p>It irks her, to watch Zelda flagellate herself like this. Oh, a part of her appreciates a good apology, but the shame simply will not do. “Sabrina had some say in it herself, you know.” </p><p>Never let it be said that, when a spread of kindnesses are available to her, Lilith will pick up anything but the handle of the already embedded knife. </p><p>Never let it be said that Spellman women cannot surprise her. Zelda... is laughing.</p><p>“Oh by all that is unholy of course I know. Ha. Quite right. Whatever anyone tried to do to her, she’d do twice over to herself.” </p><p>Then, the laughter turns to tears, though it doesn’t die away. Zelda stands behind the gravestone, cigarette held to her closed, trembling lips, shoulders shaking with mirth and grief dripping from her eyes. Her other hand falls to brace herself against the cold finality of its smooth-carved arch. </p><p>A part of Lilith wants nothing more than to turn on the spot, then and there, and vanish in a whirl of hellfire as she’d always planned to end this day; without contact, without confrontation, but… Zelda is right. Who knows when she’ll have cause to see this straying flock and its striking, grief-stricken shepherd again. They pray elsewhere, now. </p><p>So she takes a step forward, then another, skirting the edge of the grave with an adventurous cross-step, and places her hand atop Zelda’s own. “Thank you for the apology.” </p><p>To her latest surprise, Zelda turns her hand beneath Lilith’s, intertwining their fingers, and stares intently into her eyes. “Does it help,” she whispers. “To have gained such power, when you lost a child.” </p><p>Lilith gives the question its due, weighing it in her mind, idly stroking the back of Zelda’s hand with her thumb, feeling the faint give and slide of tendons over fine bones, that rare softness of life. “Yes,” she answers at last, into the crushing weight of this woman’s eyes. “It does.” </p><p>She could have said more. She could have qualified: She was long prepared to birth only the destruction of worlds; she merely dared believe, for a fleeting moment, that this would be different because it was more truly <em> his </em> than any of her past legacy of infernal creations. She need merely remind herself that he was never different, and, gradually, pain fell before the weight of inevitability. She conceived a pawn, birthed that pawn, contemplated making of it another king to love and serve, but in the end, chose herself instead. It gutted her, but then, as she always had, she carried on. It was a far cry from what these two sisters had, with a girl not their own, made entirely their own through their own choice. There were different kinds of family, just as there were different kinds of agony. Hers was of a size, a sort, where victory could soften its edges, and the rush of long-awaited power could stop up its drain upon whatever inverted star is left of her soul. Zelda’s, she suspects, will require far more traditional remedies. Time. Care. </p><p>Lilith says none of this, because Zelda did not ask, and what she had asked… well. </p><p>It never hurt. </p><p>“I could share some, if you’d like. Another time.” </p><p>She can see it is the agony answering from within her, but she doesn’t mind. It tastes quite sweet, reaching out to her with its raw, grasping edges, dark seeking dark. </p><p>“I would.” </p>
<hr/><p>Hilda often finds Zelda seated beneath the statue of Hecate, staring up at Sabrina, late at night, with the pup curled beside her. She’d wanted, at the end of their long, sleepless first week back under the same hollower roofs, to try a retreat to a time before everything had gotten so terribly dark. Thought perhaps she could creep up to their old room, crawl into bed beside her sister, warm them both in shared grief and shared memories, and finally get a spot of rest. </p><p>But she had found the bed empty and cold as a grave, so after a mild bit of midnight panic and a seeking spell, she had tracked her down at their Goddess’s feet and settled beside her on the floor instead, knees tucked up to her chest, cold of the floor seeping through her jammies, but at least her shoulder was warmed by Zelda’s silent proximity. </p><p>For the first several nights of this, they didn't say a word. Inevitably, Hilda would fall asleep right where she was, and wake indefinite hours later, back in her own bed with Dr. Cee obliviously beside her, better rested than she felt she had any right to be, and worried that, as kind as Zelda was to return her, she was not doing the same for herself. She had grown pale, gaunt, and she stretched more thin each day, as though if she walked out under a bright enough sun, she’d no longer cast a shadow. Witches cope better than most with a touch of insomnia, but there is always a breaking point, and it could be a more terrible thing for the waiting.</p><p>After two weeks, Zelda turns her head to watch her walk over for the very first time. When Hilda settles in, she speaks, her voice like sandpaper. “I cannot pray to her anymore, Hilda.” </p><p>Not for the first time, it occurs to Hilda that this nightly ritual is as much about what Zelda turned her back to as it is about where she gazed. </p><p>“Is this what it will always be, to be tethered to some uncaring deity, forever toying in our lives. Is this truly what it is to be witches? What it has always been?” </p><p>“Well, love, I’m not sure you can really blame—” </p><p>“Oh, for pity's sake, this isn’t about blame.” </p><p>For a moment, Hilda is so pleased to hear Zelda’s familiar, righteous anger, she almost forgets to be worried it’s aimed at her. </p><p>“It’s about absence. What is the point of having this, <em> being </em> this, if she cannot be bothered, in our hour of greatest need, to d-do as we ask, to give us the strength to—” The words stop without warning, as though cleaved right at the edge of her lips, no faltering end, no further sound, just silence. </p><p>Hilda is very good at filling silences, but in this moment, she can find nothing to put in it. She hasn’t the will to argue about great cosmic forces with her sister. She’s not entirely sure she would. She hasn’t… been agonizing over it as Zelda clearly has, but she hasn’t been keeping up her prayers, either. She isn’t angry. Not at the Dark Mother, anyway. She just hurts. She just wants to hold things, things that are tangible, things that are still here, alive. </p><p>Like her sister’s hand. She takes it from Zelda’s lap and squeezes it between her own, hard. </p><p>“Tell me.” Zelda’s voice is that ghostly whisper again. “Do you remember those few, brief days, when we prayed to Lilith.” </p><p>“I mean, it’s barely been a year, Zelds, of course I do.” </p><p>“Barely a year,” she breathes. </p><p>The silence returns. Hilda keeps waiting for… the rest, whatever it might be, but it never comes, and this time, she finds no easy escape to sleep. Eventually, birds sound somewhere beyond the doors, and Zelda gets up, and walks away. </p>
<hr/><p>“She offered me something.” </p><p>Hilda skipped a night of the pilgrimage, but she didn’t get any more sleep, so she came back. Zelda spoke before she even sat down. </p><p>“What’s this, now?” she asks, trying to piece together this start with the other night’s end. </p><p>“Lilith,” Zelda says, like it should have been obvious. </p><p>“You mean, back when you were being her High Priestess and all?” </p><p>“No, Hilda, I mean the other day. At the funeral.” </p><p>Hilda blinks. “You know, now that you mention it I did catch a glimpse of her at the back, but she didn’t come inside for refreshments, did she.” </p><p>“No, she did not.” </p><p>Hilda waits. After a few centuries, she can always tell when Zelda has more to say; when, if she starts talking, Zelda is just going to talk over her, so better just wait things out. </p><p>“I think I might accept.”  </p>
<hr/><p>Lilith has not been waiting for this prayer. She has been doing a great many other things. The throne of Hell is not one of idle hands. And yet, the moment she hears it, those great many other things are allowed to fall by the wayside. Court is dismissed. The fires, ever attentive to her mood, burn low. She settles, more than she has since her second ascent, relaxing her shoulders into one curved index, propping a knee up against a thumb. Her eyes close. </p><p>
  <em> Hail Lilith, beguiling in vengeance; first among witches, first to conquer shame. Twice crowned, thrice anointed with the royal blood of Hell, yet by whose own hand and no other, all which is yours was secured.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Unholy Lilith, guardian of the impenitent dead. Present were you in an hour of need when we did not ask.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I am asking, now.  </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Zelda is unsurprised to find the guest in her bedroom. She is almost more surprised to find herself there, after so many nights without, but after saying her silent prayer beneath the statue, she found it felt brittle behind her, no longer even something to lean against, so she decided it was time to return home. </p><p>“You know, that’s one thing I’ve always admired about you.” Lilith leans against her vanity, just below the mirror, dressed in the sort of timeless black that might be entirely suitable for Pandemonium, yet equally so for the mortal realms. “You wield devotion like a blade. <em> Thrice anointed.</em> I consumed a great deal of blood for your pretty words.” </p><p>Zelda closes the door behind her, trapping herself in with Lilith’s inscrutable mood. “I suppose I should say I’m glad they pleased you, but in all honesty my capacity for devotion is a bit… strained.” </p><p>Lilith’s sin-red lips pull towards a smile. “Then I should be glad I never had you praying at your full potential. You might have put me out of my misery before I bested it.” </p><p>Zelda’s instinctually combative response stalls at the realization that Lilith is being… very genuine with her, now, despite the idle tone of her words. “Have you, then?” she asks, hearing a coldness in her voice she’s not sure she feels. “Conquered misery along with everything else.” </p><p>Lilith’s smile slips. “I would not say conquered, no. Conquered is… very final. There’s nothing final in this. I have bested it, for now, and any given day it will test me again.” She stares at Zelda with those clear blue eyes Zelda has often thought of, during the sleepless vigils. Watching her over a gravestone. Needling her. Offering her… </p><p>“You have to understand, power will not give you some things.” </p><p>Lilith knows, then. Why she prayed. She hasn’t forgotten. A part of Zelda had been sure she would. </p><p>“It will not bring her back.” </p><p>“I know that,” Zelda snaps, taking two steps closer to where Lilith still idles, not because she wishes to be any nearer, but to pluck her case and holder off the dresser and light a cigarette. She avoided smoking in here, once. For Hilda’s sake. “I don’t want that. I— I mean, of course I want that, but I <em>know, </em> in my bones, I cannot have it.” </p><p>Lilith rises from her slight recline, crosses the last bit of floor between them, and steals Zelda’s cigarette from its holder with two fingers, taking it to her lips for a long, slow drag. “Good,” she says simply, steadying Zelda’s hand with her own so she can return the prize to its little golden cage. </p><p>The touch makes her go very still. Hilda, grabbing at her two days ago, falling asleep on her shoulder for weeks — that has been the only contact she’s had in many, many days, and Hilda… Hilda’s hands are so like her own. She never startles at her sister’s touch. It is simple, meaningless warmth, like slipping your hands up your own sleeves on a chilly morning. </p><p>Lilith’s warmth is not simple. It thrums with infernal heat, coiled just beneath the veneer of her flesh and bone. </p><p>“I want…” she whispers, then trails off, because Lilith already said it, and if there were to be another end to those two words… </p><p>“Yes?” Lilith prompts, and all at once, there are so, so many possible ends, so many wants, so many suffocated longings. </p><p>“I want it for me,” she says. “Not for her. Not for the coven. Not for any… <em> reason</em>,” she all but snarls the word. “I want it to— to want something, again. Something I’m not being asked to give.” </p><p>Lilith watches through narrowed eyes for a moment after the words stop. Then, she nods, reaching out and catching Zelda’s hand once more, this time pulling the ring from her finger, dropping the still embered cigarette and holder together in her little stone tray. One hand never leaves hers, and the other comes down on top of it. </p><p>“I had… similar reasons,” she says. “Before vengeance got in the mix.” </p><p>A warmth begins to creep up Zelda’s arm from her pinioned hand. </p><p>“He’d taunt me, now and then. Asking <em> Why, Lilith</em>. <em> Why do you even want the throne? </em> And I would answer in… oh, a thousand ways, across the centuries. And every time, he would sneer out that utterly humorless laugh of his and say <em> You want power for power’s sake, Lilith. That’s why I like you so</em>.” </p><p>The warmth has reached her throat, sliding from collarbone to collarbone and beginning to drip down her other arm. Zelda has never known the sharing of power to feel like this. Over the centuries, she has known moments of great and sudden transference. She has known times when power moved through her without ever touching her, has felt herself merely a vessel for higher things. And she has felt, the most intimate of the many ways she has known before tonight, the touch of the natural world, moonlight tingling against her skin, moss pressing up under her bare feet, gravedirt lodged beneath her fingernails. </p><p>Never has the giver held her hand. </p><p>“It was only recently that I understood… just how little he could make sense of me. My wants. My hunger. That was not why. <em> Power for power’s sake</em>,” she sneers. “Something that could only appeal to those who have never known its absence.” </p><p>“Lilith,” Zelda says, and… doesn’t know why; didn’t mean to. She’s… filling up. It curls down her chest, pools in her stomach, slicks down her legs like a bath of hot oil, and the part of her which has always connected to the dreadful divine, a part of her that has felt utterly deadened, severed, in these many, many sleepless nights, has woken like a livewire, and reaches, now, to twine around this source, this fount, this infernal woman who… speaks, still, with a detached sort of fury, of what it means to hold such a thing between them. </p><p>“I wanted power, enough power, that it could never be taken from me again.” </p><p>“Yes,” Zelda agrees without a second thought.</p><p>“I suspected you might understand.” She gives her that smile, a sad one Zelda has caught a time or two before, when there were far less words between them. Across a crowd, across a room, across a silence. </p><p>“There is, as they say, a first time for everything,” she pushes back against any insinuation that one agreement begets more, but the breathlessness of her own voice gives her pause, undermines her halfhearted rebuke. She licks her lips, feeling a final, upward crawl of magic along the column of her throat, tendrils idling in the veins beneath her tongue, her blood overfull, pressed tight against her skin. “Why did you offer?” she forces herself to ask. “I have not agreed to worship you again.” </p><p>“True. But would you care to know the cruelest thing I’ve learned about this power, Zelda Spellman?” Her name, from Lilith, in this brimming moment, seems to hold the weight of every drop of magic that lies between them. </p><p>“Well, now that you have me curious, yes.” </p><p>Lilith’s smile loses its edge, For a moment. It is just a smile of a very striking woman, standing very close to her, peering out from the midst of wild curls with winter-cold eyes, holding her hand.</p><p>“It is not less for being shared. It was no great sacrifice, allowing witches to dabble in its shallows. It cost him nothing. It costs me nothing, to fill you to the brim with it until you cannot hold anymore. Oh, it is not the same, having it given as opposed to having it as a part of you, but isn’t that just all the more vile? Nothing but his whim, giving and taking it from your coven, from other witches, from me. He had nothing to fear, no hidden vulnerability, not in this. Just… neglect, or often malice, towards those he had made dependent on him.” </p><p>With Lilith's haunting words as a backdrop to the continued press of power through skin, Zelda is realizing it is no mere turn of phrase, being filled until she can’t hold any more. She is beginning to feel dizzy with it, her physical form losing sensation, sensations replaced by only infinite points along that twining connection to this infernal heat. Her knees are trembling. </p><p>“I can be very cruel, you know. I've become a despicably selfish woman. But not in that way.” </p><p>Zelda collapses. </p>
<hr/><p>Lilith catches the witch as her knees give out, holding her about the waist, pulling them back, together, until Zelda is slumped against her on her own duvet, staring up at her with a kind of indignant wonder that makes her chest feel tight and strange, like at any moment she might laugh, brush off the uncanny honesty of the last dozen minutes and whisk herself away again. But she won’t. Just as she didn’t at the funeral, and a dozen other times before. To anyone listening, she will always blame Sabrina’s mishaps for her ever-tightening spiral around this realm, this town, this mortuary home. And yet, there had been a time before Sabrina ever walked the earth, when strikingly audacious prayers in her name had drawn her attention to a certain presence, here. And now, in Sabrina’s wake, here she is again, right at the circling point. </p><p>“What on earth will I even do with all this,” Zelda says in a strangled voice. She seems to be gathering herself, moving to sit up, then pausing, slumping back against her a bit more comfortably. “This is absurd.” </p><p>Lilith reaches down, giving in to a notion she’s had for a while now, and tucks a lock of Zelda’s hair back behind her ear. She watches as her eyes darken, feels the small, intimate effects she has on the woman in her arms shivering through the power that connects them— Judgmental celestial powers, even corrupted: ever attentive to forbidden desires. “Well, I certainly won’t say no if you do decide to worship me again,” she offers. A tease. Mostly idle. </p><p>Zelda snorts and makes a more concerted effort to sit up, but Lilith isn’t ready for distance. She wraps an arm around her shoulders, pressing a hand in the center of her chest, and for an instant, there’s a straining of power pushing power, skin resisting skin, before that oh-so-reluctant collapse again, this time with a slight curling in, around, Zelda’s knees gliding up, brushing her thigh, as though she has been given permission to accept this for what it is, and take some measure of comfort in it despite her reservations. </p><p>“I can’t be entirely selfless about this,” Lilith continues as though nothing has passed between them but words. “I wouldn’t want… just any coven, with just any High Priestess.” She’s stroking Zelda’s hair now, she realizes, and Zelda has made no move to stop her, so why should she stop herself? “And I think… if I were trying to give more… standard, Principal Wardwell-type advice like the very good teacher I was, I’d say giving yourself things to keep you busy, like an academy to run, a young coven to teach, can be both an excellent use of these… abundant magical gifts, and a distraction. The right kind. From everything else.” </p><p>“Is the Queen of Hell telling me that ruling in Pandemonium has been a healthy coping mechanism,” Zelda scoffs, but her eyes are so strikingly kind, open, that Lilith almost misses the barb entirely. </p><p>“If you repeat that, I will have to take your tongue.” </p><p>“Noted,” Zelda answers dryly, and then the strangest smile crosses her face. “Thank you,” she says, and Lilith stares. </p><p>“That’s concerning timing. What exactly for?” </p><p>Zelda seems to wrestle with something, then admits, “I haven’t felt this much like myself in… too long.” </p><p>What a strange notion, Lilith thinks. To feel like oneself. She has lost hold of such tenuous things a great many times over a great many years. Now, she considers, distantly, that perhaps she has come to feel more herself in this borrowed form than she ever did in the one first made for her by the false god, or the one she became as she corrupted, because this she has chosen for herself. </p><p>“Will you let me sit up? I want to look at you when I say this.” </p><p>Shaking off the disquiet of self-reflection, Lilith allows it. Zelda sits carefully, tucking her legs neatly to one side, straightening her hair, then pausing, holding out her hands before her for a moment, turning them palms up, then down again. Lilith can feel it, her exploration of more infernal power than she’d held after her Dark Baptism, or upon achieving her first High Priestessship, or even after her rededication to Hecate. </p><p>“I do want to pray again,” she says. “And to know, with every part of me, <em>precisely </em>who it is, listening.” </p><p>There it is. </p><p>Zelda has gotten better, Lilith had noticed immediately upon her entrance to this room, at concealing her pain. It has been visible on her face, the dark circles beneath her eyes, but she had no taste of it; agonies buried beneath agonies trapped under the thinnest ice of willful self-neglect. </p><p>She tastes it in these words. It pulls at her own half-healed wounds, a suckling ache of things which are no longer with them, of everything that still is, and of a thousand betrayals. </p><p>So Lilith leans in, cups Zelda’s cheek in her palm, and kisses her. </p><p>There’s a moment filled only by an intake of breath, then Zelda opens to her, reaches for her, slides her hands into her hair and pulls her closer. Lilith tastes her own power on Zelda’s lips, made all the sweeter mingled together with that taste of agony, with the delectable sin of pride, with absolute crushing longing. Zelda grips her hair like she might, at any second, use it to rend her in two, and Lilith sets a hand at her throat, feeling her pulse, returning the threat of violence which is no threat at all. </p><p>Sometimes, kisses are the very currency of betrayal, but Zelda breaks her kiss like a promise, stopping, pulling back, then pushing forward again, kissing her lips again, quickly. Once, twice. A pause. Again. Then stopping herself entirely, resting their foreheads together. “Lilith if— if you do not mean this I don’t think I can bear it,” she breathes. “I can’t… I can’t <em> almost</em>… Not again…” </p><p>“No, no almost,” Lilith agrees. Her voice is light, but strained. She thinks, perhaps, this is a time when tactical withdrawal would be appropriate. Caution. Patience. </p><p>She has had a thousand lifetimes of these things. She will have none of them now. She presses her lips to Zelda’s forehead, then her lips again, then brushes aside her hair, pressing a kiss behind her ear, letting a slip of the power filling them this night slide between her lips and Zelda’s skin, another kiss, another tease, another promise. Zelda gasps and clutches her head again, nails scraping her scalp. “Lilith—”</p><p>“You’re already praying again,” she whispers against her ear, allowing her tongue to curl against the shell in its wake. “But not every part of you knows me, yet,” she adds, and the full-body shudder that wracks Zelda’s frame makes her smile. “Shall we fix that, tonight?” </p><p>“This is no prayer—” Zelda begins with a hint of irritation, but Lilith silences her with a slow, intent sinking in of her teeth, right into the muscle where neck meets shoulder. She has stared at this skin before— pale, pristine, unmarked, the most delicate, delicious contrast with all this soft, coppery hair. And the <em> sound </em> Zelda makes — utterly decimated, shamelessly delighted — is everything she imagined and more. Her hands find Zelda’s waist, support her as she presses her back, bearing her down into the sheets before she lets up, pressing small, power-filled kisses around the circumference of her mark. </p><p>“Every time you have ever said my name, it has been,” she breathes, staring down at her High Priestess at her most glorious, lips smudged with Lilith’s own deep crimson, skin flushed, the deluge of magic crackling through her filling her with a health and energy sleepless nights had tried to steal away. “You can be infuriated with me…” She feels for the buttons of Zelda’s blouse, undoing one for the sheer joy of curling her finger against the new patch of untouched skin beneath, before deciding an entire row is simply excessive and banishing the shirt aimlessly into Hell. “...cursing my very name…” She presses her lips between Zelda’s breasts, just above where a line of fabric remains. “...even condemning me to Heaven…” Mouth open, tasting her skin, feeling Zelda tremble beneath her, one hand digging in to her shoulder, the other still lost in her hair. “And still, it holds power because it’s you.” She sits back for a moment, perches over Zelda, straddling her hips, running her fingernails down her arms, drawing them away from her to press down against the duvet. “And you believe many things about me, but you have always given me my due.” </p><p>There is a turmoil in Zelda’s gaze. A flash of something like shame. She tries to reach for her again, but Lilith keeps her pinned, and her breathing picks up, chest rising and falling in rapid little gasps. “I haven't, though. Lilith, I—” </p><p>“Shh.” She leans in, craving another taste of the lips which do such wondrous things, wrapped around her name. “Now, let me give this to you,” she speaks against them, tracing the tip of her tongue across Zelda’s trembling lower lip. </p><p>Zelda’s wide eyes flutter closed, her brow creasing as though with intense concentration. Lilith feels it, then. Power, reaching out to her as her hands cannot. She catches this just as easily, welcoming it back into her, tainted as it is with a delicious flush of its new host. She returns it far more quickly, pressing a rush of it through her hands into Zelda’s wrists, watching as it lances through her, eyes flying open, back arching up off the bed, crying out so beautifully, spilling Lilith’s name into the air as the only possible outlet she has, in this moment, for all of that heat. </p><p>It is not every witch who can accept being scoured by infernal fires as a form of foreplay, but never let it be said that Spellman witches will not surprise you in the most delightful of ways. </p><p>“None of that,” Lilith remembers to say despite her suddenly dry mouth. She will not be distracted by a brush of power or these lovely hands on her skin, not yet. Zelda has made her ache with hunger as many times as she has with regret, and tonight, <em> now</em>, she will devour her. She is not entirely through with vengeance. </p><p>Not all vengeance need be cruel. </p><p>“You asked me here. You made an offering of your pretty words. Now you will lie still, and accept your reward.” It’s teasing. But it isn’t teasing at all. </p><p>“Will I, now?” Zelda says, and Lilith smiles at the raised brow, the taunting question, asked through those now red-poisoned lips. </p><p>“Mmhmm,” she answers, and seals it with the softest, most merciless kiss she can draw upon, just brushing her lips again and again and again, deepening so slowly it is all but unnoticeable that she has pried her open again, laid claim, tasted the dark sweetness of her escaping desires. She keeps kissing her until Zelda is utterly limp beneath her, breathless and empty of resisting words. </p><p>When Lilith releases her hands, she leaves them be. </p>
<hr/><p>Zelda does not entirely recall how she has become naked, but she certainly is, and whatever material Lilith’s sleek black dress is made of is not of the mortal realms, for it stays deliciously, tauntingly chilly against her, like silk just slipped on on a winter’s morning, a slick and shivery contrast to the absolute, consuming heat of her lips and hands. </p><p>The first touch of those lips against her breasts, and Zelda is forced to bite her own wrist, hard, to keep a travesty of sounds at bay. </p><p>Lilith allows it. Somehow, despite the near harshness of her words, the intractable command of them, she seems to know precisely what it is Zelda needs, in this moment. She needs to not be asked. She needs to simply be given, but she cannot lose… everything, in the process, or the fragile edge upon which this moment is poised may shatter beneath the weight of all the shadows and sorrows pressing down upon this room. </p><p>Lilith’s mouth teases across her breast, touching her only with air and the brush of power, not skin. She tightens beneath it, desire a hot and living thing she has forgotten the taste of. “Please, Lilith,” she breathes, and thinks, for a moment, she hears just what Lilith warned her of. She cannot keep a certain reverence from this cursed name, not even when she hardly has the breath in her body to shape the sound. She has a sense that Lilith could toy with her for hours, trailing fire here, there, leaving her wanting and begging in ways a woman of her age and station simply does not want or beg, and a part of her… craves that. Already. Already, after hardly more than the touch of her lips. </p><p>But not now, not tonight. Tonight she has been made so utterly swollen with power and desire that each tease is like a needle, piercing her too easily, pressing deeper and deeper against parts of her which are bruised by other things, which are not ready to be touched again. </p><p>Lilith answers her fearful need with a tongue against her nipple, hot and sudden and with it, a sense of urgency seems to consume her. Lilith’s hands spread her thighs, exposing her to only a second of chill night air before it’s the fabric of that equally chilly skirt instead, pressed against her, and Zelda cries out, presses back, feeling the indecency of just how wet she is against it, feeling the strength of Lilith’s thigh grind against her, grounding her in her own pleasure instead of chasing after spiraling, competing desires. “Yes,” she gasps, "There," and Lilith answers with that infuriating little hum of agreement right against her breast, shivery little vibrations drawing goosebumps to the surface of her skin, a flush up her already pinkened throat. The power she has been filled with is restless and reaching constantly for its previous keeper, and Lilith just keeps grasping at it with her own, pressing back, taking it and twining it deeper around her blood, her veins, her heart. </p><p>She’ll burst with it. She’ll come to pieces, she’ll— </p><p>Freeze, entirely, as two long fingers slide into her, easily, unerringly, curling up and in as if she can hold her, all of her, in the palm of her hand. </p><p>Lilith presses closer, all at once everywhere, subsuming her, moving her mouth back to her lips in nothing like a kiss, everything like a curse, a damnation. </p><p>Zelda has a surreal instant of clarity, wondering when on earth someone last took her in <em> missionary </em>position, of all things. It’s rather frowned upon, or at least joked about, in carnal conversation amongst as unholy and lusty a lot as the covens in which she reveled for her wildest years, and perhaps she… never has. Laid so precisely face-to-face with another like this, breast to breast, legs twined. Lilith’s pale eyes are all but entirely eaten by the darkness at their heart, and no less Christian position has ever felt so deviant as the simple reality of being desired and damnably unmade by the self-crowned Queen of Hell. </p><p>Her hips move to meet her; she will not be passive in this. She wants <em> this </em>. Not for any reason, and not merely to want. Want for want’s sake; like power for power's — Hell knows that is not a woman’s want. There is always a seething ruin of what has been denied, beneath. She wants Lilith to infuriate her. She wants Lilith to demand her prayers. She wants Lilith to tell her more. More of the secrets of power and its keeping that have drawn that sad smile from her when she looked upon Zelda in other times, full of other pains Zelda refused to hear. She wants Lilith to fill her with her fingers and her infernal flames and fuck her until she can forget she was ever cruel to her. Till she is forgiven. </p><p>“By the damned, but you’re lovely like this,” Lilith says. </p><p>Zelda tenses around her fingers, and tears apart. </p>
<hr/><p>Lilith finds she can’t stop at one. She feels as though perhaps Zelda stole that one from her, stole her best intentions of control out of sheer need. So she claims another, coaxing Zelda to continue to move against her fingers, drawing the most carnal of magics which thicken the air of the room after her first release into herself, then feeding it back into her perfect little thief piece by piece, drawing her desire to as sharp a point as before, sharper still, then bringing her over again. It’s no strangled gasp this time, and Lilith is far more pleased with the cry of it, the helpless extraction of sounds as she trembles beneath her. She pulls her up, then, almost into her lap, whispers, “One more?” against the shell of her ear even as she slides free of her, strokes her thighs, then turns them together the right way round in the bed, pushing her back against the pillows so she can get at what she wants, can feast on more than sounds and skin. </p><p>By now, Zelda tastes almost entirely of magic, but also, even here, of that sweet, suckling agony, and also of a woman, in that perfect, earthen way only creatures of this realm ever can. She writhes beneath Lilith’s tongue, beneath the tease of her teeth in places she will not bite even if a part of her suspects Zelda would allow it, would take her sharper edges, would accept a little blood spilled with the other magics that fall with it, even in so delicate a place as this. Not tonight. Tonight is not for blood magics. Tonight is for the magic when, at last, Zelda can no longer stop herself from reaching down and sliding her fingers into Lilith’s hair, and from shaking through the third with Lilith’s name as the spell on her lips. </p><p>Already, she wants to hear it again. </p>
<hr/><p>It is a first for Zelda, to be the more exhaustible partner in her own bedroom. How novel. How exactingly delicious, to know she couldn't have another wrung from her if her life depended upon it. </p><p>“If you decide not to worship me again, at least there are still other things we can do with this.” Lilith’s finger trails down her spine, dragging fire through her skin in its wake. </p><p>Zelda looks up at her from where her head rests against her shoulder. “Is this what you’d rather have?” </p><p>Lilith stills, fingers low on her back. “I’d rather have both, of course.” </p><p>Zelda hears it in her voice, despite it’s casual tone. Lilith expects her to say no. Perhaps that is why she was not allowed to return the favor, was only offered a promise in her ear with a taste of the offer that led them here in the first place: <em> Another time. </em></p><p>She can’t blame her, really. She wasn't exactly the most enthusiastic about it the first go round. Worship. Her devotion to the so-called Church of Lilith had been… a requirement of turmoil. Now, there is nothing to force it from her. No waning power. No waiting threat. Only her own reservations, to offer herself in that way again. </p><p>“Would I be permitted to see you there?” she asks instead of answering. </p><p>“In Hell?” Lilith returns, surprised. </p><p>“Yes, of course in Hell. Would I ask to see you in Heaven?” </p><p>Lilith shakes beneath her with a dark, quiet laugh. “Oh, I would adore having you in Hell. Why, I’d flaunt you endlessly before the infernal throng. I’d be so insufferable about it, they’d stop their incessant whining and flee the halls so I could have you all to myself. Perhaps in the throne room. Just like this.” The fingers trail lower, tingles spreading at the very base of her spine. </p><p>Zelda shivers. “Absolutely not,” she says, though she suspects Lilith will take that as a challenge. She pivots. “I... could, now. Go. Be absent from my life, here. For a time. Ambrose encouraged me to… see that there’s more freedom now. More than I’ve known in a half millennia of responsibilities. To remember that Sabrina lived for such things, consequences be damned. He went off on a— a <em> pilgrimage of scholarly pursuits </em>not three days after the memorial, and had the audacity to goad me that I must think about what I would do next on his way out the door. I’m afraid I snapped at him rather horribly, but I— I did hear him. I do listen to my family. They think I don’t but I always have.” </p><p>She quiets, realizing how far her words have strayed from their original path. Melancholy has crept back into bed with her, the reason she abandoned it in the first place. </p><p>“They undervalue you. Your little flock,” Lilith says idly. </p><p>“Oh, I’m well aware. But that isn’t what I mean. I’m not… looking to abandon them for their faults, any more than Ambrose was when he left. Just—” </p><p>“—take a little something for yourself,” Lilith says, putting voice to the shame Zelda can’t quite shake at the idea of it, so she doesn’t have to. “You know I am <em> entirely </em> supportive of indulgence.”  </p><p>Then, Zelda finds herself laughing, and it hurts to do it, but it’s a good hurt. “Quite,” she says through the clawing mirth. </p><p>When she looks up, she sees pain on Lilith’s face, and it quiets her.</p><p>“What is it?” she asks, not really expecting an answer. </p><p>“I had a… brief indulgence of my own. Just for a few days. A fantasy I pretended could be real. Locked away in that spare room of yours. With Adam.” </p><p>It is the first time since Zelda heard tell of the powerful, horrendous act whose fresh mythos ripples through the infernal hoards, cementing her rule with its ghastly, potent legacy, that she has heard Lilith speak his name. </p><p>“I imagined what sixteen years might be in that place if I let it be more than a prison. If I… coaxed you in. Slowly won you. Brought you back to me. I kept thinking… you learned to love one child of the Morningstar. Why not another?” </p><p>Zelda has never known anyone who holds pain the way Lilith does. Like it is weightless, but fills every inch of her to the brim. If she doesn’t say something… simple, she’s going to cry in the face of it, right here against Lilith’s shoulder, and it is not her place to cry these tears. They belong to Lilith, if and when she so chooses to let them go. </p><p>“I do just love babies,” she offers. “It’s my fatal flaw I’m sure.” </p><p>Lilith’s hand trembles against her as she strokes Zelda’s hair, and she seems lost in middle distance, but by the time Zelda’s gaze falls away, losing against the pull of a sleep she has neglected for a great many days, Lilith's pain has settled back again. Not conquered. Only, for the moment, calm. </p>
<hr/><p>Hilda isn’t too terribly surprised when Zelda doesn’t turn up at the statue the next evening. She’s a little more surprised when, the night after, she realizes Zelda’s bedroom is empty, too, the door open, everything neatly made up and tucked away. </p><p>She feels the age old tickle of a midnight panic settling in, left over from one too many terrible nights full of terrible things, but before she can get up to another seeking spell, she finds the note waiting for her on the bureau. </p><p>
  <em> My Dear Hildy,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That offer I mentioned. I’ve decided to accept. Don’t wait up for me, and for pity's sake don't fret. I will see you again soon.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>  Z. </em>
</p><p>Well then. Not fretting might be asking a bit much, but she'll make do with the rest. </p><p>In the end, she's quite pleased to discover she has no trouble falling asleep beside Dr. Cee that night. She has a sixth sense about a very few things compared to more sightly witches, but most of them are to do with Zelda, and wherever her sister is, she’s well and truly conked out for the night. She can’t be quite so sure about the rest of it, but she'd make a guess, in that entirely mundane, nosy-sister sort of way, that Zelda isn’t sleeping alone. </p><p>Good for her. </p>
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